The First Step is a Doozy

When I quit my job at the St. Petersburg post office, my friends and co-workers said I was crazy. They said I would regret giving up a job with such great benefits. When I told them I was going to move to Tallahassee, take a one year course in horticulture and look for a job in the nursery industry, they knew I was certifiable.

During that year at school, while I was living on a combination of savings and credit, there were many times when I was sure they were right. What was I thinking . . . a forty-something-year-old woman with too many years and too many pounds on her and way too many years out of school? Wingless, I had jumped off a cliff, and I wasn’t confident of my ability to bounce.

Lucky for me, a parachute appeared just as I was graduating in the form of an opening at Native Nurseries. There were holes in it (I thought), because Native Nurseries is a retail nursery, and I am not a people person. I get along with plants way better than I get along with the average person.

Lucky for me again, most Native Nurseries customers are not people . . . they are gardeners, nature lovers and bird watchers. It is fun and sometimes even a joy to help them choose just the right plant, find an organic solution to a landscape problem or identify the bird they saw that morning. So as it turns out, the one aspect of this business I was sure I wanted nothing to do with has turned out to be my favorite . . . almost. My very favorite are the National Geographic moments.

Those are the times when the nursery comes to a stop for a few minutes to watch some wonderful happening of nature. Employees and customers suspend their busy running, buying, tasking to watch a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis in one of our butterfly cages, two male pileated woodpeckers performing their odd territory-claiming dance round and round a large pine trunk, snakes mating(!) or dozens of zebra longwings flying in from all directions to roost together, like Christmas ornaments hanging from the Spanish moss in a dogwood out by the parking lot.

But the best nature sighting of all occurred on a Friday in the spring of 2008. A wood duck had chosen a cavity at the top of one of the topped water oaks in our bird garden for her nest; and late that morning, the nursery came to a complete stop when Jody ran through shouting ‘the ducklings are fledging, NOW!’

Customers and employees poured from all parts of the nursery; my customer and I rushed away from the counter leaving the credit card machine waiting in vain for the transaction amount. We crowded around the office window, lined the west side of the building and packed the back porch—anywhere with a view of the bird garden. What an amazing sight. Wood ducks hatch fully feathered and fledge within hours, jumping from their nest to the ground whether the drop is six feet or sixty! In the office we passed the binoculars around; and there they were—at least four ducklings peering from the opening at the twenty-five foot drop to where their mother and the rest of the brood were waiting behind the moss covered rocks.

Did they look nervous? You bet! Through the binoculars I could see them jostling each other and working those beaks. And you didn’t have to speak duck to get the gist: ‘your turn’, ‘no, no, after you’ and maybe even ‘go ahead—jump—the career change will do you good’.

Finally one of them took the leap, and dropped like a rock (those are some pretty useless wings on Day One). It bounced once and joined the rest of the family to watch as the rest of its siblings followed. The luckier ones landed on the spider lily, one bounced off the suet feeder; but they all finally joined mom in the march to the creek behind the nursery. That is, all but one joined mom.

For those of us who grew up in large families, we get this. There’s always one sibling who just has to go her own way. So once the west side of the nursery was taped off so the new family would have a clear shot to the creek without human interference, Donna and Jody chased ‘Following my Own Drummer, Thank You’ through the secret garden, the native azaleas and the mountain laurel under the close scrutiny of one of the resident hawks. Donna had the butterfly net, but Jody finally caught the little truant with his bare hands. I heard he dived head-first into the brush to do so.

You’d think after all that the little AWOL duckling would be home free, but by the time Jody reached the creek, the others were so far downstream Drummer Duck didn’t stand a chance of catching up. So once again Jody helped her out. He threw that duckling as far as he could in the direction of her family. She was the only one of the brood to drop from the sky twice that day, but at least her second landing was on water. Mom swam back to collect her and that’s the last any of us saw of our wood ducks.

We spent the rest of that day grinning and telling the story to everyone who came into the nursery. For myself, I couldn’t wait to get home and call my St. Pete buddies to tell them just who had the job with the great benefits after all.

Start Your Salad From Seed

It’s finally that time again. The sweltering Tallahassee heat is slowly giving up and it’s time to plant a salad buffet that will produce plentiful fresh greens through the winter. As visions of kale, collards, and chard dance through my head, I am reminded of the lessons I have learned through trial and error in my past fall gardens. The most significant improvement has been growing my vegetables from seed sown directly in the garden in blocks or wide rows. Not only is growing from seed the most economical way to start a garden, it also allows you to grow more diverse varieties of vegetables than are available as transplants. Most importantly, it is much more productive per square foot than standard rows of transplanted seedlings.

Starting from seed is easy and fun. Success starts with the right seed selection. You can find fresh, healthy seed varieties that are tried and true for Tallahassee at your local nursery. If replanting an existing bed, I just add a few fresh inches of compost before I plant. You can start a new bed by following these easy steps:

1. Select a mostly sunny spot and break up the soil with a garden fork or spade, removing sod and any existing plants and roots.

2. Prepare the soil. Add a few inches of homemade compost, mushroom compost or composted cow manure and mix with existing soil. You can also mix in some organic granular fertilizer such as Plant-tone that builds the soil and feeds the plants.

3. Plan out wide rows to plant, 2 to 3 feet for the best yields, but not much wider for ease in weeding and harvesting. Rake the bed out smooth before planting.

Now the fun begins! The easiest way to sow seeds in wide rows is by sprinkling or broadcasting them over the bed. This is an easy and carefree way to plant seed. A large bed can be effortlessly planted in a few minutes. For the most even distribution over the entire bed pass your hand over the area and scatter the seeds. It takes a little practice to get the hang of it. Ideally the seeds will be about an inch apart, but don’t worry if you get some unevenness, just come back afterwards and redistribute by hand or just thin them out later as they grow. Once the seeds are sprinkled over the soil, tamp them down gently with the back of a hoe, spade or board. To germinate well, a seed needs close contact with moist soil.

The next step is covering the seeds with the right amount of soil. Small seeds like lettuce and carrots usually need about one half inch of covering. Larger seeds like peas and beans need about an inch of soil. The basic rule for most seeds is to cover them with enough soil to equal three times their own diameter. Distribute loose compost over the tamped downbed, rake it evenly out to the proper thickness and water well with asprinkler. Keeping the seed bed moist will be especially important for the first few weeks or so. As the seedlings emerge you will need to thin them out to allow room for them to grow and mature. Don’t feel bad, those thinnings can go straight to your salad bowl! Lettuce, chard, kale, collards and other leafy green crops can be grown close together and thinned out periodically as you eat them, allowing the remaining plants to grow and mature. For heading crops like broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower, make sure to thin out any weak looking plants early, giving the healthy ones about ten inches of space to grow and mature. Once established, begin a fertilization regime. I use a diluted Fish and Seaweed emulsion early on, and then I switch to Plant-tone. Keep on top of your gardens’ watering needs and you will be rewarded with fresh greens to feast upon well into thespring. Enjoy!

The Value of Native Plants for Wildlife

Tallahassee Democrat 8/19/10

In Tallahassee, we have many fine non-native plants to use in our landscapes – camellia, azalea, crape myrtle all come to mind. The claims that native plants are easier to grow and require less water sometimes do not hold up.

For me, the main reason to choose native plants in the landscape is to promote the unique relationships between our native plants and animals, from the smallest microorganisms, insects and other invertebrates to birds and mammals. Simply put – what you plant in your yard makes a difference to wildlife. There are unique evolutionary relationships between native plants and wildlife that have developed over a very long time. Here are a few examples.

Red buckeye blooms in mid to late March, just in time for the return of ruby-throated hummingbirds from Central America. The hummingbirds drink nectar from red tubular flowers and, in return, provide pollination services for this native tree whose nuts are food for other wildlife.

Sweetgum trees have close relationships with several animals. When American goldfinch arrive in late fall or winter, they can be seen and heard high in sweetgum trees clinging to the prickly balls feasting on abundant sweetgum seeds. Many of our resident birds, like the Carolina chickadee, also depend on the seeds of sweetgum.

As valuable as seeds and fruit are to wildlife, native plants serve an even more important function. Native plants, from grasses and wildflowers to towering shade trees, form the base of the food chain. Our native insects are uniquely adapted to eat native plants; some are generalists and can eat a variety of plants, but many are specialists that can only digest certain types of leaves based on the chemistry of the plant. For instance, the luna moth would not be with us without the sweetgum tree and a few other native hardwood trees. Each female luna moth may lay 150 eggs, which then become 150 highly nutritious caterpillars, feeding chickadees, vireos, spiders and more. These in turn may be eaten by a snake, hawk or other predator. It is estimated that of the 150, only 2 or 3 survive to mate and lay eggs.

Most of our butterflies and moths depend on native plants, not just for nectar, but for sustenance while in the larval stage as caterpillars. For instance, spicebush swallowtails depend on sassafras, giant swallowtails on hoptrees and Gulf fritillaries on passion vine. Without their native food plants, these butterflies would cease to exist.

To make our yard more hospitable to wildlife, our goal each year is to increase the percentage of native plants. Over the last 18 years, we have transformed our front yard from a mediocre monoculture of lawn to a shady native oasis beneath a huge live oak on one side and a wildflower/butterfly garden on the sunny side. Judicious use of nectar rich non-natives like pentas, perennial salvias, Mexican sunflower and cardinal guard extend the blooming season of our butterfly/hummingbird garden and mix nicely with the native purple coneflower, ironweed, heliopsis, sunflower and other wildflowers.

We’ll always have room for a few azaleas, camellias and hydrangeas among the natives, but native plants provide the staff of life for wildlife. For further reading, I recommend Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants by Douglas Tallamy.